Chrome and Steel
by IronAmerica
Summary: With the exception of the leather jacket, Uncle Miles was nothing like Charlie had expected.


So, my last entry (possibly) for Charlie's week over on tumblr.

Un-beta'ed, so quibble away.

- o – o -

Chrome and Steel

Charlie's first memory of her Uncle Miles is flying down a highway, clinging to his back and giggling as he guns the throttle to make his bike go faster. (The speed they're at is probably illegal, but Miles never cared about that. Neither had Charlie, when she was little.) She remembers being lulled to sleep by the hum of the engine as her uncle slowed down when he got near the street she'd lived on as a real little kid, so he can pretend he didn't break every traffic law on the planet for his day spent babysitting his little niece.

That's also her only memory of him, since he disappeared after that. Charlie remembers her mom and dad screaming at each other a lot, and then Danny waking up from a nap and adding his own caterwauling to it, which just made the fighting louder and louder until Charlie has to hide in a closet with a flashlight and a picture of her favorite uncles in the world to escape it.

She's still got the picture, which she keeps in her wallet. (The wallet is attached to her belt with a chain, which drives her parents nuts because they say it makes her look like a juvenile delinquent. It's the only thing they agree on anymore—without an argument, anyways.) Uncle Miles and his blonde friend—her Uncle Bass, although he's not actually related to any Matheson—are smiling over their shoulders. They look devious. The jackets with the M insignia embossed on the back in white don't help any. Charlie imagines them riding in on their motorcycles (also in the picture, and Charlie _knows_ they're beautiful custom jobs that took her uncles _years_ to do) during one of mom and dad's fights and just spiriting her away so she doesn't have to listen to them fighting anymore. Danny's never included in those fantasies, because Charlie knows he'd keel over dead the second he got on a motorcycle, and besides, he's _always_ the cause of mom and dad fighting.

At least until mom vanishes one day. Dad says he and mom got divorced. Charlie knows that it's Danny's fault, but she can't yell at her baby brother. Danny sits in his room, gaunt and pale and draped in half a dozen blankets so he doesn't get a chill, tears rolling down his cheeks. (That's the first and _only_ time Charlie lets him hold the picture of their uncles. It's also the first and only time Charlie's ever seen her sickly, gaunt baby brother smile about anything.)

Charlie grows up and moves out, relishing the chance to be far away from her father's over-protectiveness and the annoying presence of her stepmother—it's not Maggie's fault, but Charlie kind of hates her two stepbrothers, and the fact that Maggie isn't Danny's doctor anymore, which led to more fights with her dad than usual. (Well, more than there'd been since mom had separated from dad when she was ten, anyways.)

She only comes home to see Danny anymore, and only when he's well enough to be allowed to stay at home instead of in the hospital where he can be monitored. (Charlie never visits him in the hospital because it smells like disinfectant and despair, neither of which she likes at all. Danny understands. Kind of.)

The leather jackets from her childhood memories of her Uncle Miles and the photograph come back with a menacing cloud over them a few days after she turns twenty. She's forced to be home for the week, since dad's made sure to go all out for her birthday and Danny's been allowed out of the hospital for a few days. That's when everything goes to hell.

It's only when the detectives come around that Charlie manages to shake herself out of everything, including the shock. Her dad is being carted away in a bodybag. Her shirt—the one that used to belong to Uncle Miles and has a faded, worn-out Eagle, Globe and Anchor on the front—is stained in blood. Daddy's blood. Her hands are covered too. He's dead. Danny's been abducted.

Daddy's last words echo in her ears. She has to find Uncle Miles in Chicago, because he's the only one who can get Danny back. He's good at killing people.

Charlie knows, when the detectives finally leave, why mom and dad had always fought. Why Uncle Miles had never come back after her fourth birthday. Why mom and dad didn't like motorcycles or her dream of getting one and a jacket like Uncle Miles' to go with it. Because they were bad people. They killed people. They'd kidnapped her baby brother, who'd never done anything wrong. (The voice echoing in the back of her mind, that it _should_ have been Danny who was dead and daddy who was missing but wasn't because Danny was stupid, is ruthlessly crushed before it can make her cry again.)

Except Charlie has to go find one of the bad, evil men that always had mom and dad so worried, because he's the only one who can get Danny back.

She finds him in a dive of a bar in Chicago. She only recognizes him because of one of the jackets in a display case along the far wall, barely visible through the haze of cigarette smoke. There's an embossed white M with a half circle around it. She knows that patch on the sleeve that's blue leather instead of black.

If it weren't for the jacket, Charlie knows she'd never have recognized Uncle Miles as the badass biker he used to be. He looks older and faded, and not at all like she's expecting.

She's a bit underwhelmed.

And, unfortunately, he's her only option of getting Danny back.

"I'm looking for someone," she says to him as he pours a drink for one of his patrons.

"His name is Miles Matheson."

- o – o -

So, what did you think? Good? Bad? Think the biker au is going to end badly if I continue? Drop a line and let me know!

AN: This is a biker AU. I was compelled to write it after seeing some lovely jackets on a tumblr post.

AN2: The title is from a lovely song by Neil Young called "Unknown Legend", which is basically about this 'verse's Charlie if you listen to the lyrics.


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